


come faith, i'm dying (slowly)

by Shipperwolf



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Almost a Fix-It, F/M, canon compliant up to 8.05, dany deserved better but she's staying 'mad' in this one, if you're angry and you know it shake your fists, unfortunately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shipperwolf/pseuds/Shipperwolf
Summary: This is his punishment, then, he thinks. For all of the atrocities. For the murders, the secrets, the plots and the betrayals.He lives.





	1. needlework

 

He thinks, somewhere past the pain, the blindness, the suffocation, that he can hear voices.

He is surely dead. He must be. The voices are those of the gods, debating which hell he gets to suffer in for all eternity. (He wants to laugh at the notion. The fucking gods, actually existing. But then, he thinks: wight walkers, dragons, fire magic? Why not.)

There’s blood in his ears. He isn’t sure how he knows this, but he does.

The muffled voices grow close. The sound of stone being moved shortly follows.

Jaime cracks his burning eyes open—well, _eye_ , as it were, seeing as how his left one is also full of blood—and dares to peer into the blurred shadow of the fallen keep.

One of the voices comes to fall close to his ear. He swears he knows it, despite the disorientation,

“You’re lucky, kingslayer. Be still.”

Searing heat shoots into his side a moment later, and Jaime coughs instead of screams. His one working eye widens, the wreckage around him blurring, spinning, growing too dark and too bright at the same time.

Arya Stark is digging a needle and thread into one of his wounds.

She’s ghostly white, smeared in blood and ash.

Her hands shake as she works. He tries to groan in pain, but only gags drily, chest crackling with the effort. He wonders how many of his bones _aren’t_ broken. Jaime swallows hot, dusty air, cranes his head to the side to see a Stark soldier pulling a body out of the rubble next to him—

Cersei.

 _No,_ he wants to shout, _leave her buried, where I cannot see._

This is his punishment, then, he thinks. For all of the atrocities. For the murders, the secrets, the plots and the betrayals. He lives to watch her ashen, broken body dragged away, her eyes half-open but seeing nothing.

He wants to vomit.

He can’t.

The urge to sit up hits him, to sit up and grab Arya and shake her, demand that she kill him, put an end to it.

After all, isn’t he on her list?

 _Take the needle and drive it into my skull,_ he wants to say.

His voice cracks weakly as he whispers a simple “why?” instead.

She shrugs, her fingers fumbling for a moment with the needle. She glances behind her and Jaime sees Jon Snow—he’s sure it’s him through the dust and ash—moving slowly and carefully through the ruins, a limp in his step but his telltale gait giving him away.

Jon looks his way, briefly, and speaks to the soldier carrying Cersei.

Jaime swallows as they leave his line of sight, and his sister is gone.

“Brienne would probably want me to save you. Not sure if you’ll live, though. Not sure if you deserve to.”

The name from her lips wracks him, and Jaime feels the ghosts of Brienne’s hands on his face, and the _blue blue_ _blue_ of her eyes staring into his, begging.

_I don’t. I don’t deserve it. Finish me. Finish me, please._

Arya stills when he chokes on a sob.

She moves to another wound and drives the needle in without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd always wanted SOME kind of interaction between jaime and arya
> 
> take that, dumb&dumber


	2. visiting shadows

He supposes the Stark men got quite the laugh out of listening to him shout in agony as they hauled his broken, half-limp body out of the rubble and into one of the few rooms of the keep still intact.

He’s exhausted, only somewhat aware of the goings-on around him, but he can hear enough to know that Danaerys Targaryen is dead, executed by Jon Snow himself in retaliation for her sacking of the city.

_“To be honest, I never really cared much for them. Innocent or otherwise.”_

Bile rises in his throat.

A lie. Another to add to the collection he’s been building for the past, oh, forty years.

Jaime closes his eyes and lies still on the small bed they’d unceremoniously hefted him onto, willing sleep to come (and perhaps never let him go).

/////////////////////

_Blue eyes, muddied behind steam, watch him in silence._

_He’s warm, too warm, and he feels as if he’s going to faint._

_He looks down. The steam is coming from water. So is the heat._

_Jaime feels himself talking, and though he cannot hear the words, he knows he’s telling her why he did it._

_Why he chose to live with shame and disdain and outright mockery for the rest of his days._

I’m going to fall, I’m going to sink, catch me, catch me, let me tell you my name.

_He thrashes. Water sloshes over the edges of the bath._

_He sinks, expects her to pull him close and yell for help._

_She doesn’t._

////////////////////////

The sun is trying to set when he wakes, groggy and disoriented, wondering briefly if his stump is still fresh, still bloody, still burning with every breath—

As if on cue, it tingles. Itches.

He doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

His neck strains, the muscles feeling too tight, too stretched, even when he does something as simple as turn his head enough to look about the room.

The bed is pushed against the far wall, a single, small window high above his head. A table and chair sit empty nearby, and a cold fireplace graces the wall across from him. They’ve probably left him to die, he thinks, or else left him to the possibility of it, while they scurry frantically to do---what?---take stock of the damage of the city?

All of it is damaged. King’s Landing is _gone._

He doesn’t know who is alive and who is dead, aside from those he’s seen with his own eyes, and of course the heresay of the soldiers in the halls.

It shouldn’t matter to him, anyway, should it? What is he even doing there?

_What are you doing?_

_I’m dying._

His neck pops loudly as her voice echoes in the room and he jerks his head at the sound.

Imagined, of course.

She isn’t there.

Jaime feels his heart seize in his chest when a shadow casts itself in the doorway, too short to be _her_ , but familiar all the same.

Jon Snow hovers just inside the room for a long moment, regarding him.

His hair is free and tussled, his cloak hangs heavy on his shoulders as if it carries more weight than all the world. His dark eyes are sullen and tired. He doesn’t speak.

Jaime stares for a long moment before feeling his lips stretch into a sardonic grin, teeth somehow aching the moment air hits them,

“I suppose we’re both of us the slayers of great Targaryen monarchs now, aren’t we, boy?”

An edge, dangerous and sharp, flickers behind the exhaustion in Jon’s eyes for a brief moment, and Jaime welcomes the possibility of a blade to his heart.

_What else am I to do here, but die?_

Jon takes a long step into the room, looks around as if appraising. He gaze settles on the fireplace, untended and unlit, and for a moment it seems as though he may get it going. Jaime watches the fingers of Jon’s right hand dance at his side, the other hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

The movement stops abruptly and Jon turns to look at him.

“I’m Lyanna Stark’s son….and Rhaegar Targaryen’s.”

Jaime feels very cold very suddenly, as if death has already staked its claim on him, but he doesn’t respond to the confession. He only watches the boy’s tired eyes with his own, a strange understanding flickering between them before Jon turns again and leaves, his cloak casting darkness across the room.

///////////////////////

He doesn’t know why Jon Snow felt the need to tell him of his parentage.

Another day or so passes, or so he figures by the light of his window, and Jaime can still barely move his arms or legs or even neck without instant pain. He lies there, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows slowly move with the sun. On occasion he hears footsteps, random soldiers bustling down the hall nearby. He sometimes cranes his head to watch the door. They’re always Stark men.

No sign of the Dothraki, the Unsullied, or even his own former soldiers.

They never look his way, despite leaving the door wide open, and neither does a servant come to check on him.

 _Perhaps they’re all dead._ The constant tang of smoke in the air makes it seem a high likelihood.

He’s counting the cracks in a corner of the ceiling for the eighteenth time when a shadow on the wall moves just slightly.

Jaime starts, and pain immediately follows, his broken bones roaring back at him to be still or suffer the consequences.

“Careful, kingslayer. You’ll break your neck jerking around like that.”

Jaime watches as the shadow seems to manifest into actual form before his eyes, and he, of course, _must_ be seeing things, because Arya Stark stepping into the room from inside her own shadow just isn’t possi—

He purses his lips together and remembers how she snuck past an entire army of dead men to kill the Night king, how in the days before he had heard whispers of her ability to sneak in and out of existence like a shade, knife on her hip and needle in hand.

The girl was not one to be underestimated. And Jaime never did.

His muscles settle, just slightly, and he finds it strange that they do so without conscious effort, as if the sight of the most lethal girl he’s ever known—well, second, only to Cersei—brings him some form of comfort.

It should be wariness.

It should be fear.

Arya leans against the doorframe and holds up a waterskin, shaking it slightly, a mocking smile on her lips.

And suddenly, as if she had slipped into his body and willed it, his throat cracks and burns and _screams_ in thirst. Jaime licks his lips and wants to cry out, feels as though another second without water will be the final end of him. He laughs, instead, because if he dies from thirst rather than a blade, or a bloody collapsed building, well, that would just be the most horrible, most mundane, most _appropriate_ end for the infamous Kingslayer, now wouldn’t it?

She’s by his bedside in the time it takes to blink, and he feels the coolness of shadows follow her. Wordless, she holds up the skin again, eyeing him without malice or slyness or humor.

She looks down at him with no emotion whatsoever, ice behind her eyes as she waits.

He looks at the skin in her hand and smiles, sickly,

“It isn’t horse piss, is it?”

She shrugs in response, a small, gentle lift to her tiny shoulders. Her head tilts smoothly,

“See for yourself.”

And then a hand is under his head, propping it up, nails pricking into the back of his skull, a reminder:

Be still, or suffer the consequences.

He drinks, and it’s not piss, or even wine, and his hand clenches at his side in its frustration to reach up and tilt the skin further up, because _gods_ , he’s dying of thirst, and he didn’t know he didn’t want to die this way until this very fucking moment.

Arya lets him drink until the waterskin is empty, and he coughs when she pulls it away.

Then she drops him, abruptly, and his head thuds against the thin down pillow and into the hard mattress below.

“Thank yo—”

The shadow moves across the wall and he knows she’s gone, his genuinely grateful words carrying across to no one.

//////////////////////////

He falls asleep at some point, no doubt well into the night because when he wakes again, it’s to shadows cast by flames and not the sun. He jolts again, ignoring the pain in favor of dread, the kind of dread that can only come from memory and experience.

_Burn them all. Burn them in their beds…_

But the fire is small, flickering playfully from the far wall, warmth welcoming him to be still and safe.

Jaime glances its way before settling on his brother’s form, hunched over the table with a cup of wine in hand.

Tyrion looks up at him, their eyes meeting in the dim, dancing light.

“How are you feeling?”

A tired sigh, from both of them.

“How are _you_?”

And then the shaggy curls of Tyrion’s hair are buried beneath his throat, his forehead pressed into Jaime’s chest as he sobs, and Jaime finds the strength, then, to reach up and grasp at the back of his brother’s neck, gentle but firm,

_I’m here, little brother, I’m here and we’re alive. And it hurts._

He lies still, feels his shirt growing wet as he lets Tyrion cry, for the Queen he believed in, and the one that he didn’t, and the city he hated, and its people that he loved.

He runs his hand across his brother’s unruly hair, and the shadows shift as they quietly weep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brienne is coming. like winter except without ice zombies.


	3. first breath

He calls the tiny room home for weeks.

Tyrion is his most frequent visitor, filling him in as much as possible on the…unusual turn of events since his almost-death:

Daenerys dead, the throne a now-hardened pile of melted, useless metal, and Jon Snow—Aegon Targaryen, he refuses to be called---calling for a council to replace the role of monarch entirely.

Jaime wants to laugh at the notion, only because it would be the absolute one thing he _knows_ Cersei would hate most.

No one’s ass sits on the throne, now. Now, there’s a big, round table sitting in the great hall, and only a handful of people have arrived so far to fill it. Cersei would roll over in her grave.

Jaime pushes himself up to lean against the wall beside his bed, look up at the cool morning light coming from the window.

It didn’t surprise him to learn that his sister had executed the Naath girl, lopped her head from her shoulders right there in front of the dragon queen and the Unsullied leader (Grey Worm, he recalls; as brave a young man as he’d ever seen during the fight against the dead). Daenerys’ rage would have been justified, he felt, if only she’d sought the Red Keep itself outright.

But to target all of King’s Landing?

It was just too much.

Too far.

Even now, weeks later, Tyrion still mourned.

“ _And is she? Different?”_

_“She is.”_

_“You’re sure?”_

_“I am.”_

And perhaps, Jaime thinks, his brother was right.

But that was before Cersei did what she did best, and brought yet another world crumbling down around her.

//////////////////////

It’s Davos Seaworth, of all people, that brings him the walking stick.

Something obviously handmade, crafted nicely and from quality wood, Jaime almost wants to ask if it was commissioned for him specifically.

He doesn’t.

He’s had enough unearned kindness for a thousand lifetimes.

//////////////////////

He can only walk for short periods of time before his back threatens to seize up and his knees try to buckle underneath him, but it doesn’t stop him from hobbling outside the room at least once a day.

Just to see something, _anything_ else.

A different set of cracked stones from the ones surrounding his bed.

Soldiers—now a confusing combination of his old forces (what few are left) and Northmen of varying houses—seem to ignore him, although he doesn’t miss the occasional passing glance from Jon’s men, appraising. Judging.

Ned Stark would be proud.

///////////////////

His unreliable feet carry him to the throne room one day, where he first lays eyes on the remnants of the throne, unrecognizable, grotesque.

But then, it was always an eye sore, he thinks.

Always fit for a monster.

The council table has been situated in the middle of the hall, papers and books and inkwells strewn across it as if in hurried frustration. Jaime can imagine Tyrion being to blame for most of the haphazard mess, his determination to put the realm back aright driving him forward into long hours over his notes.

Jaime smiles, proud, for the first time since…

_Since Winterfell._

_Since he laid his blade soft upon her shoulders and said the words._

His lips fall, and suddenly he’s too tired to stand, even with the stick.

He sits in one of the chairs and leans over the table, presses his forehead against his stump. He ignores Jon Snow wandering into the room, feels his presence hesitate for a long moment as the boy regards him…

And then hears the scrape of wood against stone, loud, close, and he looks up to find Jon watching him from the chair beside his, a cup in hand and the same tired look in his eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

How he wishes people would stop asking him that.

“I can walk, at least. For a time.”

A nod.

Jaime finds it strange, how _un-strange_ it is to be speaking casually with this man, the once bastard of the North, now revealed to be the legitimate ruler of the seven kingdoms…

The heir who doesn’t want it.

Jaime can see it in those dark, exhausted eyes, like a reflection whispering back to him.

He just wants to _rest_.

The sound of liquid sloshing has him glancing down to see Jon holding out his cup of wine, shaking it slightly.

Jaime takes it, offers a small nod in thanks.

“Can I ask you something, Ser Jaime?”

_Ser Jaime? Seven hells._

He downs the wine in two deep swallows, suddenly desperate to be drunk.

“Of course.”

“Would Rhaegar have made a good king?”

Jaime stills, empty cup resting on his knee.

Jon is watching him with slightly sharper eyes now, eyes searching for truth, for validation, for something Jaime isn’t sure is in his right to give.

But he tries, at least.

“A good king? I can’t say. Good to the people? Yes. There is often—unfortunately---a difference.”

Jon only nods, quietly, gaze sliding over the table and the mess its accumulated, before settling on the melted mass of steel that was once the iron throne.

“It shouldn’t be me.” It’s barely a whisper, but Jaime hears it all the same, and part of him wants to argue.

And part of him wants to agree.

Instead, he watches Jon Snow Targaryen meander out of the room, and wonders if he’ll come back with more wine.

//////////////////////////

He dreams that night, of cold wind, screeching corpses, fire, and warm skin.

Jaime wakes, early, the light from his window grey and new, and finds himself groggy and weak. He overdid it, he determines, walked too much and perhaps shouldn’t be drinking wine when he still sometimes regurgitates water and bread.

He’s rolling his shoulders carefully, assessing the returned stiffness to his body, when he freezes. Peers through sleep-blurred eyes at the small table next to his bed. His blood feels like it’s going to stop moving inside him and suddenly the stiffness is _pain_ , everywhere, and he thinks, dramatically, that his heart has stopped as well.

Brienne is sitting at the table, watching him.

Jaime trembles, sucks in a breath as if he’s been held underwater for too long.

He doesn’t speak, because he doesn’t know what to say.

The first thing he notes is that she isn’t wearing any armor.

_She isn’t wearing_ the _armor._

Instead dressed in a fine blue tunic, her house sigil emblazoned over her heart, she looks much like she did the last time she visited King’s Landing. The second thing he notices is that Oathkeeper is on the table, unbuckled from its belt.

_It’s yours._

_It’s yours._

_It’s_ yours.

The light in the room bounces and Jaime realizes that the fire is still going from last night. That Brienne must have stoked it for him.

He wants to crawl back into the rubble of the keep, then.

But instead he lays there, muscles tight and burning, and stares.

They do not speak for an agonizingly long time.

And then, she straightens in her seat, and slowly runs her eyes over him, assessing, before coming back to meet his own,

“How severe are your injuries?”

He swallows the lump that’s formed in his throat, and chokes on it slightly, coughing.

“…few broken bones; ribs, back, perhaps. Unsure. I’ll live.”

_But my spirit is dead. It died when I left Winterfell. Leave it buried, Brienne._

He fights tears, watching her blue eyes flicker over his face, somehow steeled and soft at the same time. _Say something hateful,_ he wants to tell her.

But no, no.

That’s not Brienne.

She’s never, _never_ been hateful.

Only angry.

Only hurt.

The steel in her eyes melts slightly and Jaime feels dampness slide down his face.

“Did you love me?”

_gods._

He’s reaching out then, blindly through tears, but he can feel that his hand is shaking.

She doesn’t take it.

“Of course I did. I _do_.”

And he means it.

His eyes close against the pain behind them, and he hears the sound of her chair moving, of cloth and metal.

When he dares to open them, she’s gone.

And so is Oathkeeper _._

_///////////////////////////_

When Jaime later learns that Sansa Stark is in King’s Landing to join the council, he understands that Brienne is there on duty.

He gives her space over the next several days, though Tyrion likes to tease that he’s outright avoiding her. Perhaps he is.

But on the occasion he does peek into the great hall, she’s always seated next to Sansa at the table, diligently attentive as the “representatives” discuss how best to transition the realm out of its lengthy history of monarchy.

He hears from Tyrion that Brienne is representing her home in addition to advising and protecting Sansa, so of course, she has no time to fret over the likes of him. A broken man who broke her heart, why would she _want_ to?

He feels silly, and desperate, and heartsick, and he knows he doesn’t deserve to feel any of those things.

So he wanders, through the halls, around what’s left of the kitchens, in the decimated gardens on the rare day he feels strong enough to make it that far. He’s alone, more often than not, and Jaime thinks its fitting for his existence to be as a ghost, unnoticed and unimportant, even to those who once cared for him most.

Brienne doesn’t visit him again after that first morning, and though they occasionally spot each other in the halls or the grounds outside, neither does she speak.

She does nod one evening, as he’s limping back to his room with a cloth filled with cheese and bread tucked under his bad arm, and its all Jaime can do not to drop his food to the ground and throw himself at her feet.

Her demeanor is cool, but not cruel (because she could _never_ be), and he understands that this is simply how it is now, and considers thanking the gods that she’s even bothering to look at him.

It also does not miss him that even with minimal armor, she always carries Oathkeeper on her hip. It speaks to him even when she doesn’t, and he’s grateful that she hasn’t tossed it into the bay.

////////////////////////

He finds the strength one night to scrub himself clean without the assistance of a servant, and it’s as he’s awkwardly dressing himself that Tyrion comes in with food and wine, mumbling something about not eating that day like a fool.

“She hates me,” he says over a bite of bread, and his brother eyes him in _that knowing way_ that Jaime has always both resented and appreciated.

“She doesn’t,” Tyrion assures, but then he pauses, watching his wine for a long moment before clarifying, “but she also doesn’t seem to react at all whenever your name is mentioned at the meetings.”

“I can’t fault her for it. I left her first.”

“Did you?”

And Jaime swallows thickly at that, eyes unfocused and seeing not his brother but _her,_ standing in the snow, tears falling and eyes pleading.

_Stay with me, please._

He should have.

He _should have._

“I did. And it was the wrong decision. And now I’m paying for it because the gods are both cruel and just.”

Tyrion pours more wine into Jaime’s cup and slides it across the table.

“If you’d stop hating yourself for a single fucking moment, maybe you could be better.”

///////////////////////

He doesn’t tell Tyrion that he sought out Cersei to die with her, not out of love, but out of a sense of justice. Cersei toppled houses and destroyed lives with her cruelty, and Jaime helped her, walked in her shadowed steps for decades, complicit in her hateful schemes.

Brienne did not deserve a man such as he, and he did not deserve the happy life she offered him.

He knew it.

Tyrion knew it.

Brienne probably knew it, too.

He sits at the empty council table one afternoon, in the chair he knows she’s claimed as her own, and stares at a correspondence letter from Lord Selwyn so long he falls asleep.

/////////////////////

“…annister. Wake up, you’ll miss it.”

Jaime jolts upright, nearly toppling over and out of the chair at the firm voice at his ear, and looks to his left to find Arya gently poking him with his walking stick.

A small grin has curled at her lips and she dangles the stick in front of him, jerking her head to the great doors behind them.

“You’d better get moving.”

He’s utterly confused, and she knows it, and he knows she knows it.

He’s used to it, by now.

“What are you talking about?”

She presses the stick into his hand, looks him in the eye with more sincerity than he’s ever seen from her before, and pats him once on the shoulder.

“The docks. Brienne is leaving. Right now.”

Jaime ignores every angry bone in his body as he rushes from the room.

///////////////////////

He didn’t even know she _had_ a boat.

But there it is, in the bay, starbursts and crescents emblazoned on the mast. It’s a relatively small vessel, but large enough, sturdy enough, to get her home.

_Tarth_.

There’s no doubt about where she’s going.

Jaime is in agony by the time he reaches the dock, covered in sweat and shaking from the effort to run (hobble swiftly, more like) past the pain. The stick in his hand served little more use than to catch him when he nearly tripped no less than five times on the way.

His right knee his on fire, and it hurts deep in his chest to breathe.

Any cracked ribs that had begun to heal were likely rebroken, and he does not care.

He stumbles to a halt on the dock, meets her gaze as she’s passing a box of supplies off to a worker. She’s dressed simply and comfortably, in brown pants and a white tunic, and Oathkeeper, he notes, is nowhere to be seen.

Brienne walks down the dock to meet him, and he can see her brow furrowed, can feel her apprehension and confusion. She stops just before him, and he’s forced to look up at her, and suddenly his nerves claim him as they did that night in Winterfell, and this time, he’s not drunk enough to ignore them.

Jaime heaves for breath and stutters despite himself,

“You—you’re leaving.”

She nods quietly, and he can see the lines drawn taut above her eyes, and then her gaze moves from him to settle somewhere behind him.

“Help the men load the rest of the previsions, please, Podrick.”

Jaime glances behind him to see the lad toss an uncertain glare his way before picking up a box,

“You’re taking _Pod_?

“He asked to accompany me. He is my squire, after all.”

“I know, I _made_ him your squire.”

“Do you want him back?”

“ _Of course not._ ”

“Good, then.”

He tries not to wince as every word comes with pain, but Brienne catches it all the same, glancing down at his chest as he breathes unevenly.

“You should go back to the keep and get tended to.”

“I don’t _want_ to go back to the keep.” And he sounds like a petulant child, he knows, and he also knows that there are tears forming in both his eyes and hers, and his breath keeps catching and souring in his chest.

He coughs, tries not to stumble forward into her.

Brienne steps closer, then, brings her hands to his shoulders, close to his neck, and steadies him, and he can see her so much clearer in the sun of King’s Landing than he could in the hazy grey of the north, and he wonders just how stunning she looks next to the blue waters of her home.

He holds a breath when she catches his eyes and holds them, and it hurts to do so, and he doesn’t care. She’s crying, silent, but her gaze is firm and open. Certain.

“Do you want to get on the boat, Jaime?”

An exhale, a release, and _gods_ , it feels like being reborn, like breathing for the very first time.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

And he does.

And she lets him.

And he _lives_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rom-com'd the ending and have no regrets.


End file.
